Volume 4- Across the lands

Part 1

-RAPHAEL BLUESCALE’S POV -

Darkness surrounded everything. Permeating every fiber of both the tangible and intangible worlds. Drowning every color, stripping the world of its warmth. In that murky ocean, I swam. My mind sinking deeper into it the more I struggled, fading in and out of consciousness.

Sometimes, I would hear sounds, words perhaps, yet I could not make out their meaning. I simply hated them and the man pronouncing them. If that thing could be called such. It was the skeleton speaking. I could never forget that voice of his. The more it reached me, the more I loathed it. The more I hated it, the more I struggled to get rid of it. The more I struggled...the deeper I sank. Until time lost all its meaning.

Images flashed before my eyes. It did not matter whether I kept them close or not, my brother's last moments, the moment my spell pierced his body, the moment life finally abandoned his eyes...like a broken record, the visions kept replaying in my mind, overlapping with each other until I could hear my brother speaking directly to me from beyond the grave.

"It's your fault...-" He would say in a coarse, raspy, and void of any tone or emotion as he pointed a bony and bloody finger at me "-You deserve this...suffer"

I could not take it anymore. Soon, insanity became my only companion in that darkness. It spoke to me. Words of comfort for the most, praises for my resistance, or attempts to spur me further. I liked it, that feminine voice that rang softly in my ears, slithering its way into my head, loosening the bonds that tied me to reality. It was, in a word, comfortable. Soothing almost.

It felt real, yet at the same time somehow detached from it. I believed it was my insanity speaking, some sort of way I unconsciously created to cope with what was happening to my mind and body. Yet the more it spoke to me, the more it came to me as a faraway existence. Something incomparably different from a human or human-originated being. I began to doubt its words.

[What if this is just another form of torture?...What if it's just a way for me to lower my guard?...What if it's a trap?]

Alas, with those doubts in mind, I began to push away that voice. I began to suffocate it. Corner it in the very back of my mind. Burning the bridges, so to say. In its entirety, this whole exchange felt natural. The right course of action. I had no idea how much time it took, from first hearing the voice to the last muffled plead. Time was nothing more than a word to me now. However, I regretted it as soon as the voice left.

Silence dawned on me once again, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I didn't even realize that, whilst the voice kept me company, the images of my past had diminished their onslaught. Now alone and without protection, I was easy prey. My past came haunting me again and with it brought the physical pain that had been soothed out of me, disconnected. Now I was fated to bore its full force.

It was maddening.

There was no blood, no external injury. Neither internal for that matter. No, I was being hurt and ripped apart on a more sensitive and private level. A level in between the physical realm of my material body and a more abstract one. Namely, my mana. For the first time in a while, I felt genuine panic as wave after wave of pure, blinding red pain washed over me. No amount of screaming seemed to soothe or quell it.

I could not feel my physical body. Nor could I move it in any way. The place I was sinking in, the body I was moving with, the mouth with which I was screaming, they all were fruits of my mind. Whether anything I was experiencing in that place was real or not, I instinctually knew that the pain, if nothing else, was real. No amount of wiggling. No amount of struggling. No amount of screaming or tugging, scratching or punching, biting or crawling seemed to free me from that dark world or the pain.

I soon realized it was pointless to fight it.

But I was not yet desperate enough to simply surrender to it either.

So, if one cannot fight back, cannot run or hide, what could one do to be relieved of that pain?... Escape. Escaping was the only answer that came to mind, the problem was how. My body was being tortured in who knows what ways, my mind was a mess, my consciousness was blinking and my mana was being ripped apart from within. I was locked in a series of cages, just like a matryoshka doll. Escaping would mean somehow breaking out of those consecutive cages. With pain ticking the seconds on my sanity like a speeding metronome, I resolved myself to push for time. Time to find a solution.

I started with my knowledge of spells. Scouring through my memory whether something I learned in class, read in a book, or heard from a bard even, could prove useful. However, spells that influence the mind are rare and require particular situations. Those that influence the core concept of a foe's mana are even rarer.

Unable to find an answer in the realm of magic, I began searching for the closest thing related to mana and mind. Namely, meditation. Hence I set off promptly on it. Recalling the techniques I became so accustomed to using in my own meditation was easy, doing so with some more theoretical Kyvern's teachings and other meditation methods from the academy was tougher than expected. Especially in that state. Even more difficult proved to be the application of said methods and techniques. In a state where pain was in a constant flow and all manners of negative emotions were clouding my mind, meditating seemed neigh impossible.

For a moment I felt compelled to search for something else, a different option. Yet nothing feasible came to mind, leaving me with nothing but meditation on my plate. With no other option, I sat down, figuratively, a began anew, as if I had never meditated before. Step by step, from the very beginning.

First of all, I had to calm down, which came to be as tricky as draining a lake with a glass. I had to ignore the pain, the fear of that seemingly unending darkness, and the cascade of feelings brought forth by the constant stream of memories. Ignoring all three of them seemed an impossible task. The most pressing of which, was dealing with the pain. To do so, getting accustomed to it seemed to be the wisest of the choices, though the one with greater risks. I slowed down my breath, purposefully controlling it, bending the involuntary spasm of my lungs to my will. I made them follow a rhythm, my lungs, one in accordance with the beating of my heart. Every four beats I would either exhale or inhale. I had no idea whether I was imagining my lungs expanding or I was truly in the process of fixing my breathing, but I could almost picture it in my head. The movement of my lungs, the swelling of my chest, and the control I exerted over the rhythm of my body. A pleasurable whilst calming feeling, as always. That slight feeling of calmness gave me enough of a reason to push forward.

The pain did not fade, nor it became more bearable. It simply became less shocking, pressing less weight onto my mind. As refreshing as that feeling was, time was not on my side...probably. Without lingering on that thought, I tried to push my mind past its boundaries and deeper into myself. Something I found impossible to accomplish. It was with dread that I realized that, from the beginning, I was already deep into my mind. A state of forced meditation, or something approaching it at least. The "feeling of my body" had just been a trick played by my own brain. I had to approach things differently.

One of the concepts of mediation is ignoring any external input. At least for those who either lack concentration or are just beginners. The issue with that was that I couldn't simply ignore the inputs my own mind was sending to me...inside my mind. It was an impossible concept. However, I could deprive myself of the ability to receive those inputs. Like an old computer with a broken internet cable, it works but does not connect. So, the work to shut off my five senses began.

It took an insane amount of concentration to deal with each of them. First was smell. Then taste, to get rid of the bloody aroma in my mouth. Hearing came next, and it took soo long to get rid of all the voices, the sounds, the words from my old world. Sight came after. A process that felt like sinking a knife deeper into my own heart until I could feel nothing from it. Forcing myself to forget once more the faces of those I loved...It would have been a less painful process to physically gauge my eyes out. Then, last came touch. The one in a constant state of stimulation. It took a great deal of concentration to try and numb myself from it, yet even then, I failed in getting rid of it.

I was at a loss. The whole point of the mediation was so that I could escape the pain that was threatening to overwhelm me. Yet I was no closer to that goal than I was at the very start. My confidence wavered. I was trapped. Stuck in that endless ocean. Trapped behind layers of my mind like a matryoshka...

[Like a matryoshka...like a matryoshka...LIKE A MATRYOSHKA!!]

The realization descended on me like a blessing. I had thought it all wrong from the start. Just like a matryoshka, I was the smallest doll, trapped in a series of bigger dolls. I was trying to skip steps, jumping straight to the last doll, the final layer. I laughed as I berated myself for not realizing sooner how dumb I was being. The answer was not "discarding the pain" but rather "separating myself from it". Figuring out the layers, the boundaries, my being was composed of and slipping through each of them, was easy neither conceptually nor practically. But it was the correct answer.

I could feel a smirk, though tormented, smile creeping up on my face as I began working on figuring out the layers. It was heavy work on the mind. It required me to dive deeper into it than I had ever done before. An impossible task if I wasn't already submerged in my own mind. Instead of pushing away the memories, the pain, the feelings, all I had to do was embrace them, trace their origin and follow the traced paths. Of course, it was easier said than done. The real difficulty was figuring out which of the layers was the deepest of the bunch. Now, as I dove even deeper, the black, murky ocean was stagnant no more, instead, it rocked me back and forth, left and right, with waves unpredictable. Figuring out which came first and which came after amongst that mess was a complete and utter herculean task.

Nonetheless, slowly and outstandingly painfully, I began to see the boundaries of the closest layer- the bars of the cage. In a furious attempt to escape the raging sea, I jumped through it. I had no plan in mind, no idea if it would simply let me "pass" and if not, what would I do. The need to escape was too strong.

I crashed headfirst on it. The barrier was solid, like a wall. A fortress built especially to contain that chaotic sea. I pressed forth, half out of frustration, half out of fear of being swallowed once again.

Something broke.

Suddenly, the sea had no more hold of me. I felt it distant, faded. A faint mist covering what was supposed to be my memory of it. I had broken through the layer but I realized too late what was the cost of it. I felt my grip on my own "self" weakening, the concept of "me" fading, slipping out of my knowledge. A scared eel.

Words and thoughts that were not mine, yet also were, knocked on my conscience. Far away...cowering...fearing retribution. I instantly knew, almost like a sixth sense, that being touched by whatever those were, was something I had to avoid at all costs. Cold shivers ran through my body as I felt that presence slowly approach.

I jumped, pushing myself away from everything else, swimming through a sea once again, calmer this time, yet somehow colder. I followed the paths that would lead me to the next layer, using the experience from the previous one as a guide. Once again, I traced its boundaries, followed through to the barrier, prepared to approach, and, as I was about to slow down and think it through before crashing headfirst onto it like the last, my consciousness gained speed. It was the same sensation as the previous barrier. It wasn't me that jumped to it, but rather the barrier that sucked me in.

Something broke.

Again.

The memories grew louder and the bright color of a blazing fire filled my mind. I was stunned. For a moment, just a moment, before I could push away the image of that destructive fire. But it was enough for the memories, I could feel them close...too close for my comfort.

I had to be faster.

I repeated the process once more. And once more something broke. Once more the sea grew calmer, the dark grew stronger and I grew colder.

Cries and laughter mixed as chaos stretched its fingers and fire licked the stars.

I had to be faster.

Once again. The barrier came into view, something broke, the sea went still and needles of ice pierced my "self".

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I was scared. What was I doing? Where was I going? What was I thinking?... Was I thinking? There was no time. The explosions were coming closer. I had to escape them.

It was becoming difficult to move now. There was nothing to cling on to, nothing to push, nothing to swim through...I was tired, but I had to move. The barrier was in front of me. I just had to be prepared and close enough for it to suck me in...but I was scared. The explosions were so close. On the other side of the barrier they had to be even closer.

I got through. The sensation of something breaking was even louder this like. It wasn't just a cup or a glass breaking but a whole window.

The explosions were so close yet so far away from me. I was safe from them. So beautiful they were. Exactly as they should be, they had achieved their purpose. It was good. I felt good.

I had no idea who this "I" was. Was it me? Was I going mad? Had I lost my sanity?

The barrier was in front of me, close. So close that I could almost touch it. It was different, this time. The barrier was solid, sturdy, and its purpose, I knew, was to prevent everything from crossing it. Me included. It was the last. I had reached the last layer. I did not recall the reason I attempted to reach it. I was in the process of fleeing from something. Perhaps those memories? Was I fleeing from the explosions?

No...No I wasn't. Something told me I was fleeing from something else. Those memories, as pleasurable as they felt, something sinister was creeping behind them but I had not to worry about them. They could not move, yet so did I.

The space around me was still. Empty. Devoid of all things. There was no sound, no movement...no "me". I felt dread as I realized my sense of self had been crushed, if not almost destroyed. I was aware of my existence, that much I knew. But what was I? Who was I? Many things came to mind, many faces, many names. Yet they all felt... incomplete. There was something more, I knew, something I had forgotten. Something I could not find there.

From where I summoned that strength I could not tell. Nor could I recall for what reason did I do such a thing. I simply instinctively, almost naturally, pushed forward. All that strength I gathered was so that I could break the last remaining barrier, separating me from everything else.

Light began to blind me, burning away my consciousness, turning me into tiny particles of ash. Yet one last thing stuck to me, a memory, a thought that followed me through the crack I created in the barrier.

It was a reflection. Nothing but a brief glimpse. It looked at me, straight to my eyes and through them, scouring into my soul and my very core. A maniacal smile crept on its pale skin and its eyes- so dark that not even a single shred of light could approach them- sucked in everything from their surroundings. It was only a moment, but I knew.

I knew I was looking at a monster.

Part 2

Something was wrong, I could feel it. Images, sounds, feelings and smells all mixed together, creating a multi-layered canvas of semi-abstract nature. A cave with bluish walls mixed with a hallway neatly built with large black bricks. Broken statues of fleshy monsters dripped blood all over the floor, making it smell of stagnant water.

I walk. Without aim and without a goal, I walk through endless cycles of stairs of grass, stone corridors, and unending caves. Sometimes I hear him speaking- the skeleton. Sometimes it's my brother, others someone else. It's confusing. The words are all jumbled together, inaudible sounds of an ancient language. I don't understand.

Something cuts me, but I'm alone, the only one holding a sword. A bloodied one moreover. My eyelids are heavy so I close them. The next moment, I'm standing in the middle of a wide hallway of stone with sconces burning with blue fire at even intervals. Beings of stone lay on the ground, broken, unmoving. I have already been there. People were with me, but now I'm alone. My heart aches. I feel like I should do something on this occasion, when I'm hurt, but I can't tell what. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So I walk.

I see rivers and I see caves. I see bones and I see blood. Naked stone and finely-carved columns. It's all mixed up, and I understand why. Time is all jumbled up, my concept of time, at least. Sometimes I'm hungry, others I find myself eating a number of strange and not so good looking foods while others I find myself gathering said ingredients. The time just didn't add up.

I knew that my torture had come to an end. Among the various things I saw, I seem to recall being freed of my restraints by the skeleton, greeting me with a malicious boney smile. He let me out of his hideout, basically dragged me really thanks to my near-comatose state, not bothering to give me a new set of clothes, or anything for that matter. I had no idea how long that torture had been going on but I could almost taste the putrid stink coming off my clothes and body.

"It's surprising that you survived, blah, blah, blah...-" The skeleton said "-I'll keep my word, blah, blah, blah...we'll meet again if you survive"

Or something of the sort. I couldn't recall precisely, and even if I could, I would not trust myself in that state. The next moment, I stood in front of a set of stairs carved from the black stone spiraling upwards. After that, it all became a mess. I figured those were the aftereffects of the torture, once I became a little more lucid of mind. Though I was unsure if it was really only the torture's fault. I had an ominous inkling that it was me breaking through the layers that caused me to fall into that pitiful state. However, what happened after breaking through the first layer is all fuzzy, as covered in a mist. The more I tried to remember it, the more it seemed to slip away. Even the memories chasing me, if those were memories, seemed confused, hidden. The one thing I could not forget were the monster's eyes. Those two black holes threatening to swallow the world whole if given the chance. I shivered just recalling it.

Remembering the madness buried in those eyes urged me to regain my sanity, even just slightly. A hopeless attempt to run away from that memory, but it was exactly what I needed. I forced myself to sit down in a corner of a dark cave, the only source of light being a small rock covered in luminescent moss. I did not move, I did not eat. I tried my best to do nothing, letting my mind fix its perception of time by itself. But I couldn't just stand there doing nothing so I began rearranging the memories I had ever since the torture stopped, to have a basic understanding of where I was and where I was going. I felt like a madman prying into his own head. I moved images and sounds, attaching them to their right memory, altering what at that time I perceived as real. Like a puzzle.

It took hours and by the end of it, my brain was far from having fixed itself but I was getting close to it. Close to feeling like myself. Close to feeling sane. Though something was amiss. A chunk of something, deep, deep down. I had to pry my mind off of it not to be overcome by madness again. But at least, I knew where I was.

A side tunnel, a place I had not visited while I descended the first time, in between the undead city and the floor below. Rat-like monsters had made of those tunnels their home, as big as a boar and with the white eyes of a blind. Their meat tastes like blood and chewing gum, but I could not afford to be picky. I was dangerously underweight. I had picked up a sword, somewhere along the road. Simple, unadorned and half consumed by rust. It was nothing great but it still was enough to inflict lethal wounds if backed with enough strength. And strength was all I had since using mana in that state of turmoil was a gamble I dared not bet on.

My stomach grumbled. Who knows when was the last time I ate. It could have been an hour as much as ten, though the latter seemed favored. I touched my pockets, checking if I, for some stroke of luck, in my delirium decided wise enough to keep some of the food. Of course, I found nothing. I sighed in compliance as I forced my body to stand up once more. I could feel every muscle stretching around my bones. An awful sensation. I picked up the glowing rock and set off once again upwards. Lucas was dead, father was already somewhere outside, waiting for us...it befell on me to get mother and Julie safely out of here.

"...at least them" I hushedly repeated to myself.

I walked and walked, using my heartbeat as a time-teller. Those tunnels were uncharted grounds for me so more than once I got lost along the way, taking a left rather than a right and ending up descending downwards or into a dead end. Each time it happened I would walk back to where the path forked, gather some of the glowing moss and mark the wall, where the rats could not reach, with an "x". It was in one of those wrong turns that I discovered something of great interest.

I was at a fork, an ovalish room with four exits, five if one of them hadn't collapsed. I had already explored the two rightmost tunnels and ended up, on both occasions, fighting off a group of rats feasting on some other beast's carcass. The injuries on my now slow legs were so frequent that my shirt was now nothing more than a rag, as I used its cloth to make bandages.

Tired of meeting rats, I decided to take the leftmost path this time, purely out of spite for the right. I was soon filled with a foreboding feeling. The ground was gradually becoming smoother, almost as if it had been walked frequently in the past, yet it also grew narrower, until I had to walk hunched over not to scrape the ceiling. It was the worst place to be if a fight broke out. Inverbally, I cursed my luck, swallowed hard, and pressed forward. After about twenty minutes, the path widened once again, only to be blocked by rocks. The ceiling had collapsed.

I clicked my tongue and prepared to walk back when I noticed something curious. Between the cracks of the rocks, a faint blue light slithered through. It was a soft blue hue, enticing, unnatural. Half of me had an inkling of what it was, the other hoped, for my own sanity, that the other was wrong. With bare hands, I began moving the rocks. It was a careful process. I had to make sure that the ceiling wouldn't fall on my head. I did not want to test my luck, not again. Hours passed, many hours, but finally I was able to push the last stone away and crawl my way through the slithering passage I had dug between rocks. An uncomfortably tight passage. The moment I stepped into the hidden room, my heart sank.

"It was here...all along" I breathlessly voiced as my overly grown nails dug deep into my skinny hands.

In front of me opened a room, circular in its shape, like a dome. In its center, a swirl of blue light with white waves of foam moved like the sea. Around it, stones with runes of gold etched onto them hovered by means of magic. Three stone stairs led to the podium where the swirling light was. A fully functioning portal moved enticingly in front of my eyes.

My hatred for this labyrinth grew deeper than ever.

"At least I know how to escape once I find them" I told myself, trying to console me.

When I realized this I freaked out a bit, noticing just how much my head was messed up. I felt like laughing as I recalled the times I called mother crazy for talking to herself while cooking. How hypocritical.

Drawing a mental map of where the portal was, I walked my way back to the fork, this time marking the tunnel with a "p" from the phonetic alphabet. The successive correct paths were all marked in the same manner. A precautionary means to not lose trace of the portal's room position. Though I was quite sure that my disgust for that swirling mass of mana would eventually lead me back to it.

A great number of heartbeats later, the tunnel forks became fewer and fewer while the main tunnel itself grew wider and taller. I could see marks of swords and crusted blood smeared across the floor and walls, signs that a battle took place. Somehow I felt glad. If people had fought and died it meant that I was getting closer to where those people came from. With a stroke of luck, I would, perhaps, find out that they retreated. But I did not blind myself with uncertain hope, rather, the more I inched closer to what I thought was the exit, the more I felt anxious.

People. I would meet people. After all that time, after what I'd been through...after what I'd done, I would meet people. The sheer thought scared me.

The tunnels became brighter. More moss filled the walls. Then, what opened up in front of my eyes was nothing short of a nightmare. A dome-like cave fifteen meters tall and around double in length shone brightly with moss-light. Spikes of stone several meters large jutted from the ground and reach the ceiling like columns. The floor was covered in bones of all sizes. Some were clearly human, others seemed to belong to those rat monsters while some were bones I had never come across. Alas, the real problem were the walls. A colander made of stone. An impossible amount of tunnels of all shapes started from those walls. Some were big enough just to fit a small rat, others several times the size of a human. Some opened up at ground level while others half-opened on the ceiling.

"A rat nest" I thought out loud.

Exploring them all would take too much time. Time I did not have. Time I wasn't permitted to waste. Yet what other choice did I have? If one of those tunnels somehow led to my family and I missed it just because I didn't feel like exploring...I knew I could never live with that. Doubt began to cloud my mind. Explore or not? Which do I start with? Do I just pick it at random?

As I morbidly pondered on that, biting my knuckles until the taste of metal filled my mouth and kicking whatever poor bastard's bones came close to my feet, I felt a sound coming from somewhere inside that cave. Without a second thought, I tightened my grip around my broken weapon and dashed full speed toward the source of the sound.

I expected to be met with the pale-white eyes of one of those ugly creatures. A swarm of them, perhaps, searching revenge for the members of their brethren I ate. Instead, I came to a halt with my broken blade pointed at a tiny human's throat. The human barely reached my sternum. The look of fear mixed with something akin to sorrow, perhaps longing, stabbed a knife into my heart.

I recognized her as soon as I laid eyes on her. She changed, that's for sure. Her feature seemed a lot more grown-up as well as her eyes, which now had a sad dark hue in them. Nonetheless, she was here, in front of me. Yet I couldn't get the words out of my throat.

I simply lowered the sword.

Part 3

- JULIE BLUESCALE'S POV -

The cave was dark and stuffy...again.

The food I had left was starting to stink as white spots began to form on its surface. I ate it anyway. Better to be hurting than starving to death...I really thought that. It had been weeks, around three, ever since I began hiding inside that little cave, barely big enough to fit my hunched body. My shoulders were stiff after all that time and my knees hurt.

But she told me to be brave. Told me someone would come, that we would be safe. So I've been brave and will keep on being...but I wanted to cry. I wanted to close my eyes and wake up in my bed, knowing that everything was just a nightmare.

I wanted to go downstairs, my mouth watering with anticipation of breakfast, the aroma of fatty meat sizzling in the kitchen. I wanted to see my mom's warm smile as she greeted me with a kiss on the forehead. Dad's lazy "good morning sweetheart" while still half asleep. I wanted to see my brothers. I wanted to see them bicker like they used to. I wanted to see Raphael's stern expression crack ever so slightly under Lucas' relentless assault of jokes I didn't understand. I wanted to see Raphael stifle a laugh then realize he laughed and hardened his expression once more as he took his frustration out on the meat on his plate. I wanted to hear Lucas' exaggerated laugh.

Tears began falling down my cheeks. I choke back the hiccups and other sounds, they would alert one of the monsters. But not the tears. Those were my privilege. Those I would not get rid of. They were the only thing that calmed me down.

A sudden sound woke me up from that dream-like memory of home. I swiftly grabbed the knife. My breath was uneven, rugged, and heavy. I had to calm down. This was not the first...neither would be the last.

A cracking sound filled the cave, reaching my humble hiding place.

[Someone's really here!] I thought, hearing the panic even in my mind's voice.

It was the sound of one of the bones I placed breaking. I made it look like it was random but weeks prior I made sure to set the bones so that, if someone or something, were to step inside the cave, I would be alerted. It always worked so far.

I could feel my heart beating in my throat. The skin around my knuckles pale as the grip on the handle of the knife tightened. Then...a voice. Inaudible words were pronounced, words I did not understand, but a shred of hope slithered into my heart. It was a human.

Finally another human.

The sound of bones breaking became even closer. It was louder and very much more frequent, as if they were breaking them on purpose. Why were they doing that? It wasn't more than one person. The source of the sound was only one. Then why were they breaking them? Out of spite for their previous owners? Carelessness or idiocy? Or was it simply childish playfulness? I couldn't wrap my head around it as the human passed over my sealed hideout in their bone-breaking stride.

The human kept murmuring something. They talked to themselves in this deep and coarse voice, as if water was a luxury to them, as if they had not drunk for months.

I waited a few seconds. I wanted time to decide. Decide whether or not to meet that person.

Then, I picked up on something. It was a familiar sound. The sound of a voice I hadn't heard in more than five long years. It was his! His voice. It had changed, sure, the decisive and collected tone had disappeared. Now confusion filled his words, but it was him. I had to look. I had to know if I was right...even if it meant danger.

I moved one of the big rocks covering the entrance of a small tunnel behind one of the giant stone spikes. With the same swift and soundless movement I practices countless times, I crawled under the hole and appeared into the cave.

It took less than a second.

The black hair reaching the base of that man's neck swang wildly as he spun around with the reflexes of a cornered animal. He was holding a broken sword. His piercing blue eyes flaming with mad rage. I felt fear grabbing hold of my neck, choking the words out of me...He scared me.

Those looked like the eyes I remembered...but they were not. Something in them changed.

The following instant I had a blade pointed at my neck. His eyes fixed on me. A mixture of battle rage and realization brewing in them. Neither of us moved. But we knew.

I knew...the man standing in front of me was my big brother Raphael.

A light, faint and dying, shone timidly in the very back of his eyes. A flash of the past.

He lowered his sword.